A Retail Attitude toward Resale Price Fixing

Abstract

THE RECENT enactment of so-called Fair Trade Acts in several states has again focused the attention of, students of marketing upon the problem of resale price fixing. For over a quarter of a century resale price fixing by contract has been subjected to exhaustive legal and economic analysis. The fact that express legislative authority is required for resale price fixing by contract seems to have been made evident by the many notable legal decisions. The perennial Congressional hearings, and public and private studies of the question have made it overwhelmingly clear that the opposition to the abolition of competition among distributors rests on solid economic grounds. Nevertheless, severe economic depression with intense price competition created conditions favorable to the revival of the price-fixing panacea for trade ills. To some extent our present state resale price-fixing laws are an aftermath of the resulting N.R.A. price controls. In the main, however, they represent the results of a new strategy adopted by the pressure groups which have long sponsored this movement in Congress. For many years efforts to legalize resale price fixing have been fostered and financed by a relatively small group consisting chiefly of the manufacturers, large wholesalers, and small retail distributors of proprietary remedies, drugs, cosmetics, and toilet preparations. The strong community of interest between the manufacturing and distributing branches of this trade is well known.1 Manu-